


Through Film

by xanithofdragons



Series: Regrets [1]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Canon, is it still called pining when they've dated and broken up?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 12:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14425632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xanithofdragons/pseuds/xanithofdragons
Summary: It all started when Matoba picked up a magazine with Natori's face on it in a convenience store. (Or to be fair, one could say it had all started years earlier when Matoba came across Natori on his way to an exorcist meeting.)





	Through Film

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after Natori and Matoba have both graduated high school, Natori has started acting, and Matoba has become clan head, but before either of them have met Natsume.

It was a coincidence the first time. Matoba was in a convenience store to buy tea and a seasonal sweet offered by the chain. He happened to pass by the magazine section and stopped when, in the sea of celebrity faces and names he had never bothered to learn, he saw one too familiar face with a lizard-like mark on it. He picked up the magazine bearing that face, and the name “Natori Shuuichi” was written on it, unmistakable. It was one of a handful of television guides, and now that he was looking, Natori was on a couple of the other ones, too, alone or with others. The one Matoba had picked up was the only one where the strange lizard yokai that lived in Natori's skin was visible, though.

He knew that Natori had an acting career he was pursuing in addition to his career as an exorcist. Some exorcists had to take normal jobs when they couldn't make enough from exorcist work alone, while others who started in another profession before coming to exorcism continued on in their old jobs. Acting was a strange choice, though, one certain other exorcists liked to privately mock Natori for. What made it even stranger in Matoba's mind, though, was that Natori didn't really need to take another job. Natori was good enough at his work to survive on exorcising yokai alone, all the more so if he had decided to join forces with the clan like Matoba had wanted him to.

It was just a whim that made him take the magazine with the tea and sweets he had originally come into the store for to the register to buy it. When he found a brief moment to himself later that day, he decided to flip through the magazine. Natori only appeared on a handful of pages. He passed his eyes over the interview with Natori in those pages, but read little of it, as neither the plot line of the drama Natori was apparently appearing in nor Natori's outlook on acting particularly interested him.

Although the words meant little to him, Matoba lingered on the pictures in the magazine. Natori was smiling in all of them. Matoba had never seen Natori smile much. If anything, when Matoba smiled at him, Natori had tended to scowl or look exasperated. Apparently Natori had gone to some lengths developing his smile, though, as each photograph showed a soft, handsome smile. He only found that tell-tale trace of Natori's connection to the world of exorcists and yokai in one more place. Something that looked like a black tail peaked out over the neckline of Natori's shirt in the last picture of him.

The second time was also a coincidence. After a job he wanted to run alone, he went to eat at a restaurant late at night. There were few people there that late and a couple of them were watching a drama on the television with the owner. He paid the TV little mind until he heard a familiar voice from it. He turned to look and sure enough, he saw Natori appearing in the drama. 

He started to half-watch the drama as he ate, only really paying attention to the scenes with Natori's character. He couldn't follow the plot, but he suspected that had as much to do with coming into a complex story halfway without watching the previous episodes as it did with his lack of focus.

When he thought about it, it had actually been a while since he had seen Natori in person. Natori was attending meetings less often when the Matoba clan was in attendance, or, to put it more accurately, when Matoba was in attendance. Even when they did happen to be at the same meeting, Matoba would hardly see Natori, and they would rarely even greet each other. It was obvious Natori was avoiding him, sloppily so. Perhaps it was normal for a person to avoid their ex-boyfriend after breaking up, but Matoba had thought they could maintain a more friendly relationship. To be fair, though, before they had started dating their relationship had been one where Natori stayed away and Matoba had gone to him. Maybe what had really changed was that Matoba had stopped chasing Natori as much.

Although he saw Natori less these days, he still heard about him. He was doing better and better for himself as an exorcist, and Nanase and other members of the clan would mention it to Matoba when they saw Natori at meetings. Especially Nanase. He got the feeling that Nanase, at least, had clued on to some of what had happened between them, but was choosing not to say anything directly. Smart woman that she was, she had probably known about it even while it had been happening. At the time, Matoba had been too young to guess that he may not have been hiding their relationship as well as he thought.

The drama ended shortly after Matoba finished his food. He lingered long enough to catch a commercial with Natori promoting the new flavor of a popular beverage brand. As Matoba left the restaurant, he considered buying it the next time he stopped in a convenience store.

The next time couldn't be considered a coincidence or even a whim, really. A couple weeks later Matoba went to a rental video store with the intention of finding something Natori had appeared in to watch. He had spent his youth focusing his time learning about various yokai and ways to seal or exorcise them and reading the histories of every family of yokai exorcists in the area, and so he had ended up ignoring things like popular television shows and movies. As a result, he had never learned how to navigate a rental video store.

He decided to ask for help. He looked around and saw a young woman who was finishing shelving items.

“Excuse me.” The woman had been about to walk away when he stopped her. “I've never used a rental video store before. Could you help me find something?”

“Um, of course. What can I help you find?” The woman looked at him strangely for a brief moment before schooling her face into a perfect customer service demeanor.

“I'm looking for something Natori Shuuichi's appeared in.”

“Oh, are you a fan of his?” The woman's smile turned more genuine.

“...Yes.” It was true, in a way, although Matoba wasn't exactly a fan of Natori's acting career.

“Right this way, then.” The woman led him through the store to a section marked “drama.” She pointed out a handmade display they had for Natori with a selection of series he had appeared in at one of the end caps. It was one of a few similarly quaint displays throughout the store.

“Did you know that he's from around here?” The woman asked.

“Yes, I'd heard.” This answer was also mostly true.

“That's part of why some of us working here want to support him,” she said, explaining the display.  
“This series is my favorite he's been in.” She pointed at one of the items on display.

“Thank you,” Matoba said, picking up the video the employee had pointed out.

Finally she took him to the register and asked another employee there to help him set up a membership and check out. With the employee's help, he rented the video and took it home.

Later that evening, sitting alone in his room, he pulled the video out and started watching it. The first episode started and cicadas chirped. So it had been a summer drama. The setting was a high school, and Natori appeared wearing the school's uniform. Matoba picked up the case to look at when the drama aired to see how many years it had been after Natori had finished high school. The episode set up romances and love triangles amongst a handful of characters. Natori's character's love interest seemed to be the heroine of the series.

The first episode ended with a pop song rolling over the credits. Matoba had time still before he needed to sleep. He started the second episode. The plot had all the major characters going to the beach.

For some reason, the drama showed a scene of all the male characters changing into their swim trunks. Matoba assumed this was an excuse to titillate viewers with a group of attractive half-naked men. On a shot of Natori, he noticed a dark blur moving across the screen. He paused it and saw the lizard suspended in a crawl up Natori's chest. He pressed play and wondered at the way the mark, captured through film, sometimes appeared as a blur to him and sometimes appeared clearly as a lizard.

He noticed while watching that Natori's shoulders had broadened and that his muscles had become more defined. Matoba wondered if that was just because he was older or if he had worked out specifically to better fit an ideal of male beauty for occasions like this drama scene.

The drama's attempts at titillation were successful. Thoughts of what it would be like for Natori to hold him in those stronger arms came to mind. Matoba had good memories of those arms when both of them had been younger. Natori had been a generous lover. He was a giving person at heart. Matoba thought back to the last times Natori's hands had been on him. They had already blurred together in his memory. He lowered his own hand to feel himself underneath the sweatpants he was wearing as he felt desire rise within him.

In the drama, the characters continued on, playing on the beach in their swimsuits. Matoba lowered his pants and took himself out of his underwear as he took particular note of Natori's lightly tanned skin against the blue and gray swim-trunks he was wearing. They had never gone to the beach or pool together, instead spending their summer days together as they had the rest of the year, hunting yokai. If he had asked, would Natori have gone with him, Matoba wondered.

Matoba began to stroke himself. Natori had never forgotten Matoba's pleasure while they had been together, and Matoba had happily taken everything Natori would give him. He had touched Natori freely and delighted in every time he was touched. Natori had rarely refused him anything, and if they were still together, Matoba assumed Natori would probably still give him whatever he wanted. He moved away from memory and imagined Natori sitting behind him. In his head, Natori's naked chest pressed warm against his back, arms wrapping around his waist and hands stroking him. Matoba sped up his hand.

Matoba came and the credits ended their roll across the screen. In his distraction, he had lost the threads of plot of the show he had been watching. It didn't matter. He was alone and didn't need to lie to himself that he had been watching for any other reason than to see Natori, even as a character he was playing rather than as himself. Maybe the distance between them now was necessary, but if Matoba saw him, from time to time, on magazine covers or television programs, it meant the same thing as when he saw him from afar at an exorcist meeting or heard about him from Nanase, that he was alive and well.


End file.
